


Just Thought You Should Know

by singedsun



Category: The Haunting of Hill House (TV 2018)
Genre: Drinking to Cope, F/F, Family Issues, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-21 19:13:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17049002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singedsun/pseuds/singedsun
Summary: For a moment she tries to think of a way to soften the dismissal. Something about how it’s not really a first date kind of answer. Or something disarming about how the gloves had really come off. She’s had a lifetime to deal with glove puns, or other related jokes about hand-wear like mittens and muffs. Many of them were only fun when she was far younger, at a time all teenagers feed on ennui and innuendo.





	Just Thought You Should Know

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Moebius](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moebius/gifts).



The gloves go on as soon as Theo sits up. It’s not just habitual, it’s necessary.

Trish touches her neck. It’s a soft caress, her fingers are warm as they move down and across Theo’s shoulder. 

“What are those for anyway?” 

Theo pushes down on the echo of a lifetime of similar questions with a heavy sigh. It’s a question with no real answer. There’s no good answer she could put words in a way that would make sense to anyone else. No one who is still alive, that is. 

Theo shakes her head and moves away from the bed. 

“Okay.” Trish moves behind her and Theo can hear the wound in her voice.

For a moment Theo tries to think of a way to soften the dismissal. Something about how it’s not really a first date kind of answer. Or something disarming about how the gloves had really come off. She’s had a lifetime to deal with glove puns and other related jokes about hand-wear like mittens and muffs. Many of them were only fun when she was far younger, during the years all teenagers feed on ennui and innuendo. 

As the proper time for a real response passes, Trish brushes it aside and sits up. She’s talking, rattling off facts like she’s trying to distract herself from Theo’s own avoidant silence. Theo isn’t listening in any way that would help retain much of what Trish is saying. 

_ It should be so simple. _ No one is really asking for the whole helping of her traumatic childhood when they ask about the gloves. She knows that. But it’s the thousand cuts of all the questions that follow. 

Eventually, her refusal to engage in anything resembling cuddling or conversation gives Trish the hint to leave. There’s a drink in Theo’s hand not much later, warming the soft fabric over her palm and she breathes in the scene of the tea and alcohol stinging her nostrils. She doesn’t have to explain anything to Shirley, it’s part of her sister’s charm. 

Later, this is how she gets to sleep: body exhausted and mind numb. 

It’s not fair to call Trish when she needs an escape. She knows this even as she’s calling her. Even as she opens the door to her room and welcomes her inside. Theo hasn’t earned this and she knows it. The part of her mind that’s always perceiving, always thinking, knows exactly that a late night booty call with a woman she so rudely brushed off isn’t the way to deal with what’s happened. She cares very little about what is right. 

Nell is dead. And the last she spoke to her younger sister, they fought. She’d gone to the basement at Shirley’s to apologize... no, to sit, to serve some kind of penitent action. To just be there with Nell. It wasn’t bravery that took off her gloves and put her hand to the cold, lifeless body of her sister. It wasn’t even curiosity. 

She just wanted to understand. 

Now, she just wants to feel  _ something. _

Trish shows up and it probably says more about her than Theo is willing to process in the moment. She’s just grateful for the distraction. Anything to get her mind onto something else, to put her day and all it’s awful revelations behind her. It’s incredibly selfish and acknowledging that she knows that is part of the justification for making it okay. The rest is a problem for tomorrow’s Theodora Crain.

“Touch me,” she says. 

Trish obliges because she doesn’t know why she shouldn’t. She’s eager and warm to Theo’s cold skin. Theo is demanding because she knows exactly what she wants. She knows exactly how to get what she needs. And even with her body overloaded by sensation, she knows how to give back. It’s insatiable and greedy, the way she lets herself ride the waves of Trish’s need. Theo is feeding the loop of hunger and satisfaction as long as Trish will let her, because she doesn’t want to be left with what will be waiting in the dark once she’s alone. 

When they do stop to rest, Theo keeps her eyes closed and one hand still resting on Trish’s leg. She knows she should say something. There’s a ‘thank you’ stuck in her throat but she can’t force the words out. What she feels more than tired, more than sated, is grateful. 

But what she says, before she lets herself be carried off to sleep in Trish’s arms is, “I’m sorry”. 

In the morning, Trish is gone. There’s a note on the table that just says “thanks”.

The gloves are on before she even touches it, before she can capture even a second of someone else. But she looks at the note for a moment, replaying moments from the night before in her head. Most of it is a blur, but she remembers that slow walk Trish made to kiss her. The feel of Trish’s hair on her arm as they lay down. The warmth and calm she felt before she fell asleep. It’s not for nothing she holds the paper between gloved fingers before starting her day.

Those collected memories of Trish diminish throughout the day. The alcohol, her father, her siblings and the void between them and the body at the end of the room, all push every other thought out of the way. If she sits, if she’s still, she might give into the madness swirling around them all. It feels like a merry-go-round she’s been chained to for twenty years, and the cracked foundation it circles upon has finally tilted too far to one side. 

The house goes dark. 

She remembers the fear, because it swells up inside her with nowhere to escape. Her hand grips Shirley's as they spin, looking for the source of the knocking. It’s her heart, she thinks. It’s her mind, finally losing grip on reality. It’s the both of them, angry and heartbroken, fractured from head to toe. When it’s over, she and Shirl are both shaking and there’s a breeze through her chest. 

She can’t go back to where dead things knock on the walls. 

Although she already knows it’s too late for all that. 

They’re not in a good place, she and Shirley. There’s a wound there she’s not sure she knows how to close. Their fear binds them just as deep as their blood, and both are stronger than Shirl’s anger. And there’s more pressing matters. Darkness is no excuse but it’s close enough to the truth. Because the pull of the void can’t be explained in words and even if she could share what she felt, really felt, she wouldn’t. 

When it’s over, it’s not really over. 

There’s family, and then there’s the Crain family. And then there’s that godforsaken house. Hill House. Even if some part of Nell is still there, she’s not sure she could face it again. She can hold on to Nell in the snow and the stars and the rain.  

Too much follows after and the days and nights and sleep all run together. Returning to work feels like returning from a fever dream. There’s a note on her nightstand that says otherwise. When she looks for it, Trish’s number is still in her phone. 

When she finally calls, she means to apologize. But the words don’t come out in the order she planned them. 

There’s no good way to explain to a woman you’ve only slept with a few times that you kissed your brother-in-law because you needed to feel something other than the vacuum of a life beyond death. So that’s where she starts. After all, Trish has already seen her at her lowest. She already knows that Nell is dead. She already knows that Theo isn’t very good at handling other people unless they’re her patients. And she’s seen the gloves and knows they’re not the weirdest thing about her. Kissing Kevin is maybe the easiest thing about the last few weeks she can share.

The story comes out fast at first. She’s a mess of words and contradicting emotions. Once, she tries to pull Trish down into the bed. Trying to buy her freedom from the memories. 

Trish is a quick study, standing her metaphoric ground after a few tender kisses. They’re less tender and more hungry on Theo’s end but just that much contact brings her senses back online. She continues and Trish settles back, a silent observer to her decades of silence. 

Once she even tries to make Trish leave, shoving a copy of Steve’s book in her hands. 

“Read this,” she says. Trish stares at the book for a moment before setting it down beside her on the bed. 

Theo reaches across her to take it back without a word of explanation. 

Once, there’s a long moment of silence from one of Theo’s thoughts to the next and she gets distracted by the woman before her. Trish is young, she remembers. A student. Psychology. 

“This is a bad idea,” Theo mutters. “I’m not a project.”

Trish shakes her head. “That’s not why I’m here.”

When she’s said the most she can say and her throat isn’t dry and she’s not exhausted by the tears she’s shed, everything is in the open. It feels like too much and not enough all at once. 

“You should go,” she says. “I just wanted to apologize.”

“And you did.”

Trish holds her for a long time: gloves and no gloves, clothes and no clothes. 

Theo says she doesn’t deserve someone like Trish. She hopes she does. She wants to be worthy of it. She wants to try. 

The truth is she’s not sure what she’s worthy or not worthy of. She knows what she would tell her patients and she knows what she would tell Nell or Shirley, she knows what she would tell her father. And she knows what her mother would say if she were here. 


End file.
